


In the Most Unexpected Places

by MelyndaR



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but someone needs to tell me not to make it a multi-chapter story, idek what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8071669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: In the most unexpected places, Natasha finds some of Howard Stark's abandoned inventions... and meets her soulmate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am currently taking cold medicine, so I'm not sure I know what this is... and I most certainly don't have an outline for a multi-chapter continuation written up... Someone remind me I don't need another WiP...

After everything was said and done, after the Avengers had split rather catastrophically, the fact of the matter was that Secretary Ross was still out to find Natasha in amongst all of the others. It had taken something dangerously close to begging for Tony to be okay with her staying even one more night in the Avengers Facility… probably because he knew she didn’t _have_ to. She was still the Black Widow; she could’ve created a new identity and been halfway across the world by now. Instead, she was wandering the halls of the Facility for what she was pretty sure was going to be the last time… because she _wanted_ to.

It was sentimental and stupid, but she wanted to have time to say goodbye to this place and, it felt, to this part of her life.

It was the middle of the night, and eerily quiet as a tomb for such a big building, and somehow in the middle of her wanderings, Natasha had found herself in a sublevel of the labs.

She really had gotten too lost in her thoughts, she realized, feeling for a light switch on the wall. Finding one turned on only one dim, flickering, orange bulb, and revealed more cobwebs than Natasha thought were in the rest of the Facility combined. A cursory look around revealed heaps of metal and a veritable library’s worth of schematics, blueprints, and journals.

Picking up one such black book and flipping the cover open, she saw the letters _HS_ taking up the entire first page.

_Howard Stark_

Looking around the room again – it was really an entire basement – she saw this space for what it was. A collection of Howard Stark’s works that his son had chosen not to go forward with over the years. Curious now, she set aside the book and picked up the nearest trinket resting on the shelf beside it. She knew better than to press any buttons, of course, but she ran her hand over the dusty thing, finding herself growing nostalgic for… she wasn’t even sure what.

In the Red Room, Natasha had grown up in a very old, very well-maintained converted mansion. For a woman whose soulmark read, “You wanna tell me what you think you’re doing using my shiny new baby,” she had always secretly liked old things, things that seemed to speak of a calmer time in a more innocent world – _the idea of which was a fallacy, she understood that, but it was still a nice thought._ For as creepy as it was, this silent room with all of its surprising science projects was also… calming, in a way. So Natasha decided to stay just a little longer, and have a better look around.

She should’ve known to make absolutely certain that she didn’t so much as bump anything by accident.

Because suddenly she heard the whir of a rusty gear behind her and turned just in time to see the side of a machine about half her height began to rotate.

“What the h—”

Before she could even finish her thought, Natasha began to feel like she was being _sucked into_ the whirling machine part – and just as quickly she fell back onto the concrete floor, flat on her back and staring at the ceiling. Except… it wasn’t the same ceiling, not the one from the sublevel room she’d just been in. This… upon a quick look around, this looked… well, almost like a converted garage, and there was vintage stuff everywhere – and it had all been kept up _very well_ … almost as if it was closer to new than old.

_But how could that be?_

She glanced warily back at the one thing that looked even vaguely familiar in this room – the machine that had gone off in the storage room. Sitting up warily, she moved to touch the thing, to try and figure out what had set it off and how to get back to where she’d been. A shadow fell across her from behind, and she surged to her feet instead, drawing a gun from her ever-present thigh holster as she turned on a dime to face the man.

He had some sort of a pipe raised in his hand, and looked familiar somehow with his black hair, mustache, and eyes. “You wanna tell me what you think you’re doing using my shiny new baby?” he asked sharply, more bluster then bite if the trembling of his hands around the pipe was anything to go by.

Natasha realized who this man was, and at the same instant what he’d said registered. “Please tell me that Howard Stark isn’t my soulmate,” she requested in a strained tone.

The color drained from his face as quickly as he dropped the pipe loudly onto the concrete floor. “You know,” he replied, his own tone shaky now. “Most people would be thrilled to have me as their soulmate.”

“I’m not most people,” Natasha shot back as Howard’s gaze slid down to the gun that she still held at the ready.

“I can tell. Where did that thing come from? Are you wearing a thigh holster?”

“Always. Though I’ll admit that the design has been given a few upgrades since your time.”

“My time? You mean _right now_? Wait a second!” He suddenly looked wildly behind Natasha to his machine, gasping, “It worked! You- you got my time machine to work! How did you do that?!”

“I wish I knew,” she answered, deciding that he wasn’t likely to be a threat – _probably just a maniac_ – and putting her gun away. “I didn’t even know what it _was_ , _or_ what part of it I touched to make it go off.” She looked at the machine, asking faintly, “But it is most definitely a time machine?”

Howard, who had  brushed past her to kneel beside his “baby” looked over his shoulder at her, and Natasha could see in his eyes when the part of his brain screaming “Science!” switched off long enough for it to come to mind what that would mean for her. “Oh. Ah… It- it is, yes.” He eased slowly to his feet, turning to face her again. “Where are you from? And what’s your name?”

She wasn’t sure how much information it was safe to give him in this situation, and she _really_ didn’t think that taking pointers from _Back to the Future_ was a good idea about now. So she told him the truth. “You can call me Nat, if you want. I’m from the year 2016.”

His eyes widened, and she saw the question coming before he even asked, “What’s it like seventy years in the future?!”

 _Seventy years!_ She didn’t mean to gasp, really she didn’t; she was a Soviet-trained assassin, she was better than that. But she must’ve done something to show her surprise, because Howard changed tactics in a split-second once again, diving for a chair at a table a few feet away and pulling it over for her.

“Here, Nat, sit.”

“I don’t—” she swallowed roughly, protesting, “I’m fine.”

And yet he barely had to apply any pressure to her shoulder, ordering again, “Sit down,” before she obeyed. “I’ve got… oh boy, all I’ve got down here is coffee and whiskey. Water! I’ve got water. Here, I’ll… Just, you just put your head down or something, and I’ll get you water.”

Before Natasha could even protest, he had already sprung up and was halfway across the lab. She watched him for a moment – _vaguely she noticed that her soulmate happened to have a very nice backside_ – before she turned her attention to the room at large. It was his lab, she saw that much immediately, and he was right; outside of the implication of having a sink in one corner, the only drinks she saw down here were a half-empty coffee pot and a couple of completely empty bottles of whiskey. _Great._

 _Like father, like son_ , she decided, and tried very hard not to think about the fact that _Tony’s father_ was apparently her soulmate.

“Here.” Howard came back to her side and pressed a coffee mug of water into her hand before dragging over a second chair and sitting in it across from her, so close their knees were touching.

Natasha didn’t bother to point that fact out as she took a timid sip of the water before asking, “Can you get your time machine to work again?”

“I…” He blinked, looking away from her and towards the machine as he saw what she was actually asking. “Yeah,” he replied gravely… sadly, really. “I can fix it. I’m not sure how long it’ll take, but I made it, so I’m sure I can make it work.”

 _She wanted to leave. Of course she did._ It was something Natasha felt the urge to remind herself of, and she’d only been here a few minutes. And she didn’t even know exactly where _here_ was!

“What day is it?” she asked him.

 He turned back to her, his arms suddenly crossed over his chest like he was trying to defend himself from… _what_? “September… something, 1947.”

He looked very vaguely like she had kicked his puppy when she’d implied wanting to leave, and she had to look away from that layer of sadness buried in the depths of his dark eyes. “How long do you think it’ll take to fix the thing?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Honest,” he promised. “But if you want to go back, I’ll make sure you get back, Nat.”

“And until then?”

“Until then, there’s plenty of room on my estate for you – of all people, of course for you. Until then…” she saw him swallow a sigh at this impossible situation that they could clearly both already tell was going to be terribly painful. “Until then… welcome to 1947, sweetheart.”


End file.
